School does its part for revegetation

FRESHWATER Creek Steiner School has completed a significant revegetation project, creating a new wildlife corridor as well as a nature and cultural discovery trail for the school.

More than 1,800 volunteer hours were required to transform the 3.27-hectare plot of land that once housed livestock.

Intended to draw wildlife and connect the school’s children with the First Nations heritage of the land, the site will play both an environmental and educational role within the community.

The revegetation project was led by a small group of volunteers, including the school’s farming teacher Mary Rose Coleman, operations manager Sarah Oliff and local environmentalist Graeme Stockton, who works with conservation outfits such as Surf Coast Energy Group and Surfers Appreciating the Natural Environment.

It was made possible a $17,000 grant from the Planting Trees for the Queen’s Jubilee program and a $12,273 Victorian Landcare grant.

Mr Stockton helped to select the indigenous plants best able to withstand the conditions, which include golden wattle and swamp gums, and sourced the seeds locally.

“This was really compacted ground and actually it was completely bare earth,” Ms Coleman said.

“Graeme had to think very carefully about what we were going to plant, about what might survive.

“Once you get a ground cover and you get some biological activity in the soil, it’s a lot easier to plant other things.”

 

She said a rare wallaby grass had already reappeared at the site that the team hadn’t know existed in the area.

Detailed planning for the site culminated in a community planting day that saw hundreds of volunteers and their children plant 2,500 plants in a single day.

“It’s important for us that the children were a part of that because the experience is so memorable, so deep; it just goes into their fibre,” head of school Gabby Brennan said.

The site also features a pathway, natural amphitheatre and a circle of large volcanic rocks where classrooms can gather.

“There’s lots of stopping spots along the path where we can take the children out and where other people in the future, when it has grown up a bit, might want to come to just walk in the bush, particularly the Wathaurong,” Ms Brennan said.

“We would really encourage them and other First Nations people in the area to see it as something that they can access.

“That’s part of the connection that we hope to build and are working on building.”

Ms Brennan said it was heartening to see the amount of growth at the site already.

“It’s not quite as complicated as people think, but it does require commitment and labour and time and knowledge.

“I think once people have actually got their hands on it once, and had a go once, they know how good they feel, how pleased they are, how excited they get when they see a little plant growing, and then they want to keep doing it.”